xi, 384 pages : 24 cm

"Marilyn Monroe was without doubt the most famous woman of the twentieth century, a screen idol, sex symbol, and cultural goddess without parallel. She has been written about endlessly since she first became a celebrity in the early 1950s, yet even after dozens of biographies which promise to tease apart the 'real woman' and the image, these many accounts display an astonishing degree of disagreement about nearly all of the sensational aspects of her life: from the circumstances of her birth and childhood to the highly charged debates about her death." "Rather than another 'definitive life', Sarah Churchwell's book is an exploration of the controversies which still surround Marilyn. Who was her father? Was she molested as a child? Did she prostitute herself to get on? Was she mentally unstable? Did she have affairs with one or both of the Kennedy brothers? And how did she die?" "The book looks at how our telling of the stories of Marilyn's life continue to trivialize a woman we supposedly worship, and in doing so, reveals what our feelings about Marilyn say about our attitudes to our cultural icons, women, beauty, sex and death."--BOOK JACKET

Includes bibliographical references (pages 365-369) and index

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